Marketplace | Coal Playhttp://www.marketplace.org/collections/122896/feed.xml
When you think of coal, what comes to mind? Appalachia? Soot? Climate change? We'll explore the economics of the most unfashionable of fossil fuels.enWhen the coal layoffs trickle downhttp://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/coal-play/when-coal-layoffs-trickle-down

Coal communities in eastern Kentucky are feeling the effects of a relentless wave of mining layoffs the past few years. Competition from cheap natural gas and high production costs have hurt the mining business here. That, in turn, is hurting Main Street.

Take Whitesburg, Kentucky, population 2,000 give or take. At the Railroad Street Mercantile, owner Kae Fisher surprises visitors with an eclectic mix of merchandise. Homemade jellies, aromatherapy oils, snack chips, and jalapeno eggs fill the shelves. In the back of the store, she’s selling used LP’s and consignment quilts.

“These are from ladies across the county who try to earn a little extra money because a lot of them, their husbands have lost their jobs,” says Fisher.

Fisher and her husband David opened their “corner market” last year, as mining employment in eastern Kentucky plunged. Inauspicious timing, but Fisher believed the downtown needed at least one store. “We’re able to pay the bills,” says Fisher. “But have we got our money back that we’ve invested? Not yet.”

A midday stroll down Main Street, Whitesburg can be a lonely experience. The courthouse is the busiest place in town, but tables at the Courthouse Cafe across the street are fairly empty. On a weekday afternoon co-owner Laura Schuster worked the kitchen by herself. She can’t afford an assistant right now. “Once the layoffs started we immediately knew what would happen, that people would be afraid that they also would lose their jobs and they would cut back anyway they can,” says Schuster. “And one way to cut back is to not eat out. I’d say business is down 50 percent, if not more.”

Whitesburg and other coal towns in the region are also suffering from a steep drop in coal tax revenue. The money goes to counties and was originally intended for an economy beyond coal. In Whitesburg’s Letcher County, coal tax revenue is half what it was just a few years ago.

Jason Bailey, director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, says over the years coal severance taxes have been diverted for other uses. “Local governments in eastern Kentucky have gradually become dependent on the coal severance as just a general fund source for operations,” says Bailey “For them to pay for police, to do basic road repair. So they’ve had a really hard time because there’s the lack of a tax base outside that as well to generate revenue.”

Thirty years ago, the country that started the Industrial Revolution - and fueled it with coal - scaled back its coal mining industry. The UK announced it was closing many of its deep mines. Today only three remain, and two of those are facing closure.

But have the Brits blundered? Is there a case for the UK re-opening its deep coal mines… and digging a little deeper?

Bob Fitzpatrick certainly believes so. But then, he would. He’s one of the UK’s few remaining deep pit coal miners.

“The coal’s here and you can get it,” says Fitzpatrick, who works at the Hatfield coal mine in Yorkshire, in the north of England. “If the mines are mined properly and managed properly they are viable.”

Then there’s the issue of energy security. The UK may have shut down most of its mines, but it still generates 40 percent of its electricity from coal, importing the bulk of it from the U.S., Colombia and Russia.

The Russians supply the largest amount of that imported coal, and after the annexation of Crimea, that has got some people worried. “The gas supplies and the coal supplies from Russia are now pretty doubtful,” says local Yorkshire politician Jane Hamilton. “President Putin has got his own agenda. I think we should be very careful and look to re-opening mines, because we don’t know where our energy is going to come from.”

The case for UK coal began to look even better last week. Geologists revealed that the country could have vast reserves of the fuel, as much as 20 trillion tons of it, lying under the sea bed off its eastern coast -- enough to keep the lights on in the UK for centuries. But the problem with deep pit mining, let alone with burrowing under the sea for coal, is that it is horrendously expensive. And, says importer Nigel Yaxley, it’s now much cheaper for the Brits to bring in foreign coal. “At the moment prices are depressed, partly because of surplus coal in the U.S. thrown up by the shale gas revolution," he says, "and partly because of the slowdown in growth in China.”

The future of British coal seems to depend on much higher world prices and much improved technology making it easier to mine, and cleaner to burn. The case for UK coal? Not yet proven.

Former mining communities around Britain have been marking what is for them a grim anniversary: it has been 30 years since the start of a national miners strike that convulsed the U.K. and its coal industry. The year-long strike over mine closures failed. After the strike, scores of mines were mothballed and a work force that once comprised more than a million men dwindled to a few thousand. Today, only three deep mines remain in operation in the U.K., and two of them are marked for closure.

Why did Britain decide to stop digging 30 years ago? Was this solely about coal, or was it political?

Ex-miner Mike Clark has no doubts. "It was political," he says firmly. Margaret Thatcher – the Conservative Prime Minister at the time – "she would do everything she could to break the working class of Great Britain. That's why she decided to close the pits. Don't forget that at the time, the coal mines were publicly-owned. It was a nationalized industry."

The miners believed Thatcher targeted them for reasons of political revenge. The National Union of Mineworkers had humbled a previous Conservative government in the 1970s by going on strike and triggering a general election which that government lost. But Thatcher may have had a more practical motivation for taking on the miners in 1984: They were Britain's most powerful and militant workers, the shock troops of a labor movement that Thatcher was determined to weaken.

"She wanted to redress the balance back in favor of capitalism," argues Christine Rawson, who grew up in a mining village in south Yorkshire. "Thatcher was determined that the unions would not gain strength, and would lose strength."

Quite right, too, says Dieter Helm, a professor of energy at Oxford University Dieter Helm. When Thatcher came to power, British labor relations were in chaos; the country was crippled by more than 2,000 strikes a year. "There was a general consensus that union power had reached a level where the British economy could no longer really function," says Helm. "And there was a very good economic case for closing the pits as well because of the high cost of deep pit mining. The contraction of the U.K. coal industry was economically correct. It had to happen. It was going to happen. It would have happened anyway."

Britain's deep mines could no longer compete on price with cheap imports of high quality coal from open cast mines in South Africa, Australia, and the United States. And, furthermore, the Thatcher government believed that those imports improved the country's energy security. Margaret Thatcher claimed that it was safer to rely on foreign coal than on the output of British miners. During the strike she called them: "The Enemy Within."

American coal mines are closing. Do the miners have anything to learn from their British counterparts who lost their jobs in a wave of mine closures 30 years ago?

There’s nothing left of Cortonwood coal mine. All traces of the mine, which had thrived for more than a century, sustaining the small village of Brampton in Yorkshire, in the north of England, have been erased.

Today there’s a shopping center and office complex on the site where the pithead and the slag heaps used to stand. Cortonwood was where one of Britain’s bitterest labor disputes - the national miners’ strike - erupted in 1984. And Cortonwood was one of the first mines to be shut after the strike against pit closures ended in failure one year later.

There may be no physical trace of the pit, but the village still apparently bears the psychological scars of the loss of the mine.

“Coal was this community, it was that important,” says Denise FitzPatrick, whose husband and son worked in the mine. “Coal was the community. Not just here, but in all mining villages. Everything revolved around the pit. It was a terrible loss.”

Financially, as well as socially. 1.200 men worked at Cortonwood. Denise FitzPatrick’s daughter, Denise Lelliott, says when the pit closed, those who could find work usually made barely half what they earned underground. Many others languished on welfare.

“It’s ripped the soul out of this community,” she says. “I love my community. And it absolutely destroys me what it’s done to it. People says it’s recovered. It hasn’t. And I don’t think it ever will."

Even today, nearly 30 years after the pit closed, and after many of the pitmen have retired or died, the unemployment rate among the ex-miners of Cortonwood is still 12 percent. Andy Lock, who works for a charity which has tried to mitigate the effects of mass unemployment caused by the shutting of coal mines, says too little was done by the government to soften the blow of the pit closures.

“In my opinion there was a lack of support at the time," he says. "So when you have over 100,000 people becoming unemployed, with the lack of infrastructure and lack of support, you get problems.”

Belatedly, the British government did pump money into places like Cortonwood. The shopping center and office complex on the site of the mine opened for business some 15 years after the pit closed. It has been a big success. It has brought prosperity to the village and it is a significant employer, but not, says Denise Fitzpatrick, for the dwindling band of ex-miners.

“There isn’t a miner I know in this village or any other village that would be content to go and stand at the back of a counter –in a shop– because their life were down the pit, working, laboring, very hard down the pit,” she says.

To the outsider, this enthusiasm for deep pit coal mining is not easy to understand. Why did the British miners fight so hard to save such a difficult, dirty and dangerous job?

“Because it were my job," says Mike Clarke, who worked at Cortonwood for 29 years. "That’s what it were. It were my job. That’s the most important thing when you’re a working man. You’ve got pride. You’ve got your family. And you look after them the best you can. And coal mining was the best way I could.”

Since Cortonwood closed Clark has thrived in the very different career of nursing. But he still misses the camaraderie of the pit, doesn’t regret resisting the closure and urges American miners to do the same.

“Yeah there is life after coal,” he says “Because you’ve got to make a life after coal. But just don’t lay down and die. Go down fighting, go down kicking and screaming. Make it as hard for them as you possibly can."

It’s no secret that coal is on the outs in the United States. The country’s natural gas boom and environmental regulations are dethroning King Coal after decades of rule in the electricity market. That should be good for the climate, but the transition to natural gas and renewables has human costs. Right now Central Appalachians are taking the hit, forcing communities there to contemplate a future beyond coal.

In eastern Kentucky, coal mining has been the lifeblood of the economy for well over a century. Now it's facing what might be termed a “low coal” future. Much of the easy-to-get coal has already been mined out. What’s left is harder to get, so production costs are higher. “The coal seams, they’re getting smaller,” says 30-year-old Ryan Trent, a laid-off miner who started at age 19. “You’ve got strata in between it, which is not full coal. So the more rock you cut, the less coal you’re getting.”

That’s partly why Appalachian coal is having a hard time competing, not just against cheap and cleaner natural gas, but against newer, more efficient coal mines in the West’s Powder River Basin and the Midwest’s Illinois Basin. Coal companies also blame stricter EPA water quality standards, which they argue has effectively halted permits for Appalachian strip mining.

The overall effect has been a wave of production slowdowns, mine closures and rising unemployment in the last two years. The median unemployment rate for eastern Kentucky’s top 10 coal-producing counties is 15.05 percent. That statistic includes Trent, who was earning $24.50 an hour, non-union, and says coal mining “is in his blood.” He’s been looking for another mining job since he was laid off in December 2012. “I’ve got the softest hands in eastern Kentucky, I’ve been doing so many dishes,” he jokes.

Trent and other miners are used to the ups and downs of the coal business, but Justin Maxson, president of the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, says this time is different. “To lose almost 7,000 jobs in almost 18 months is a catastrophe,” he says. “It’s a huge economic collapse. Folks to some degree feel like they’re under cultural assault.”

The realization that this could be a permanent decline in what’s been the lifeblood of the region is just now beginning to settle in, after years of warnings and, some would say, denial. John Haywood, owner of a tattoo parlor in Whitesburg, called The Parlor Room, says some of his more regular customers were coal miners, but many have stopped coming in. “They used to come in once a month, even twice a month,” Haywood says. “Tattoo collectors that were willing to sit for a long time and get covered up.”

“Coal miners are our middle class.” That’s a common refrain in eastern Kentucky, where more than a quarter of the people live in poverty. According to Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, starting salaries in the mines average $65,000 and the jobs don’t require a high school education.

Communities are just now beginning to seriously discuss economic alternatives. Some blame the slow start on the “War on Coal” rhetoric, saying it’s distracted attention from preparing for a “low coal” future. Others say political leaders have spent coal severance tax money on basic services instead of diversifying the economy.

Regional leaders who gathered in the mining town of Hazard to talk to Marketplace stressed they didn’t believe there was one single thing that could “replace” coal. They hope a new bi-partisan effort called SOAR (Shaping Our Appalachian Region) will come up with some alternatives. The region has already been targeted for special assistance from the federal and state government, but residents fear the money won’t be enough.

Jennifer Bergman, JobSight Services Director at the program, says the region should develop an “entrepreneurial” economy, “but we need people with money to spend to have that entrepreneurial base.”

Many here say the region should take advantage of its cultural distinctness and build an economy based on central Appalachian folk arts and crafts. Previous efforts to develop that have fallen victim to politics and lack of funding. Doug Naselroad, master artist in residence at the Appalachian Artisan Center in Hindman, says the incomes generated might not rival coal’s, but that’s not the point. “What we’re trying to create is something sustainable and that’s rooted in the culture and tradition of the people here, instead of something which just plunders the land and moves on.”

Dan Estep, 56, a former coal miner, is experimenting with that idea. He’s teaching blacksmithing and knife-making at the Kentucky School of Craft and selling his wares at craft fares. He doesn’t make much money, but says he’s happy to have a skill that’s “marketable.” “I’m grateful to live in this country,” Estep says. “Every day’s an opportunity.”

An official with the Federal Reserve recently made this rosy prediction: the jobless rate could dip below six percent this year. But there are still pockets of double-digit unemployment around the country. Take eastern Kentucky, where layoffs in the coal industry have helped push the jobless rate to 16 percent in some places.

Some point the finger at what they call President Obama’s “War on Coal.” “I blame him for trying to regulate coal fired power plants,” says 30-year-old Ryan Trent, a laid-off underground miner from Busy, Kentucky. “Because if it weren’t for that, we’d still have jobs.”

Certainly, the EPA’s crackdown on power plant emissions and mountaintop removal means fewer coal jobs in eastern Kentucky. The area has lost 40 percent of its coal-related jobs in just the last two years, acccording to Jason Bailey, director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

Yet Appalachian coal would still be at a disadvantage, according to Michael Dudas, managing director at Sterne, Agee in New York. “The cost to mine the coal in Wyoming is $10 a ton," he says. “The cost to mine that coal in eastern Kentucky can range from the low to mid-40s to upwards of $70 a ton.”

One reason it costs more to mine in eastern Kentucky is that coal companies have mined the mountains there for well over a century. They’ve already exhausted the easy coal. What’s left takes more work to get at.

“I don’t hardly see how there can be any more coal in these mountains," says Lee Sexton, 86, a legendary banjo player who retired from mining decades ago because of black lung. "There been so much of it took out, y’know.”

East Kentucky coal is also now competing against higher-sulfur coal from the Illinois Basin. That cheaper coal was a problem for utilities trying to meet federal clean air standards, but once many power plants invested in expensive scrubbers to “clean” the sulfur out, it gained a foothold in the marketplace.

Greg Pauley, president and COO of Kentucky Power, says his company will be burning less coal in the future, wherever it comes from. “As the cost of using coal continues to rise, we go away from that," he says. "And what do we go away to? Right now we go to gas.”

The EPA’s upcoming carbon pollution standards mean burning coal will cost more. Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, believes eastern Kentucky coal will “continued to be mined for generations to come,” but the industry will play a smaller role in the region’s economy.

"Chances are," he says, "companies will be more privately owned, less multinational in footprint, and they’ll likely be taking more advantage of the spot markets than long term contracts, which can create uncertainty but I think at the same time it still provides livelihoods and puts food on people’s tables.”

Dee Davis, founder of the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg, Kentucky, says it’s now up to east Kentuckians to figure out an economy beyond coal. “Coal is our history. Coal is our heritage. It’s been one pathway into the middle class for a lot of families. It’s been a friend, but it’s not our future.”

]]>Mon, 07 Apr 2014 10:17:41 GMTThe history of coal as a brandhttp://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/coal-play/history-coal-brand

New numbers show that China's coal production will likely grow about 3 percent this year, despite a government campaign to cut air pollution.

Coal's history has been intertwined with growth, the industrial age, and lately, pollution and climate change. Barbara Freese is the author of Coal: A Human History, and discusses the history of coal as a brand.

A key financial supporter of largest proposed coal-export terminal in North America is backing out.

As U.S. demand for coal drops, coal companies are looking to sell their product oversees. But to get coal from Montana and Wyoming to Asia, the companies need export terminals.

Several have been proposed for the Pacific Northwest, the largest of them the Gateway Pacific Terminal north of Seattle. But now Goldman Sachs, a key financial supporter, is pulling out.

A pension fund managed by Goldman Sachs owned 49 percent of Carrix, Inc., the parent company behind the Gateway Pacific Terminal. But the fund has now sold its stake back to Carrix.

Here in the Northwest, proposals to build coal terminals have generated opposition from environmentalists, tribes and communities. They're worried about climate change from the burning of more coal,as well as increases in coal train and ship traffic in their own region.

"It doesn't surprise me that a bank that cares about its reputation and the impacts of its investments would want to stay away," Amanda Starbuck, energy finance program director with Rainforest Action Network, said of the Goldman Sachs decision.

Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond to requests for an interview. But in a report last summer, Goldman analysts raised concerns about the financial viability of exporting coal.

The report predicted that China's demand for coal imports will shrink as that country's economic growth rate slows and its own coal supply ramps up. China's also trying to boost renewable energy and reduce air pollution.

Nearly a year ago, the stream that runs through the mining town of Majiapo suddenly turned bright orange. Today it looks like a winding river of Gatorade, cutting through the terraced Chinese countryside.

Ma says he and the hundreds of other people who live here drink this water and bathe in it. He takes me to the village well beside the river. We peer inside at the orange water. “It’s completely toxic," Ma says, "But we’re too poor to afford to drink anything else. I worry about what it’ll do to my children, what kind of diseases they’ll get. People who can afford to leave for the city have moved.”

The orange water is caused by acid mine drainage -- discharged water from a coal mine -- it’s contaminated with sulfuric acid and a range of heavy metals. It’s a problem throughout Shanxi province, which provides a third of China’s coal. Ma says his employer, Yangmei Group, which runs a mine a few miles up the river, is responsible.

So I go there.

I arrive at lunch break -- coal miners are outside a canteen eating noodles. When they see a foreigner with a microphone, a yelling match breaks out between workers who begin complaining about the water and workers who warn me to leave. Miner Zhang Quanding shows me his bowl of noodles. “Look at this water!" Zhang yells. "Pigs wouldn’t even drink water like this! I’ve had diarrhea for weeks!”

Zhang says workers have complained to management, but the complaint was ignored. Upon hearing this, the boss emerges from the canteen and yells at Zhang. Another miner shouts: “A true Chinese person wouldn’t talk to a foreign journalist.”

Zhang shoots back: “A true Chinese person can’t drink this water.”

Downstream, villager Ma Huiming says it would be best if the Yangmei Group shut down the mine. Both the Yangmei Group and the local government denied requests for interviews. Ma says he’d like to return to farming, but between the toxic water and the coal dust in the air, it’s become too difficult to grow anything.

As a red truck packed with black rocks rumbles through the village, Ma says he’s left with only one choice: mining more coal.

China burns 3.5 billion tons of coal a year, as much as the rest of the world combined. Here in the mountains of Shanxi Province is where much of it comes from. Red coal trucks the size of armored vehicles rumble through the toxic sulfur smog blanketing China’s coal country. Coal continues to move out of Shanxi to China’s rapidly growing coast at a steady pace, but the industry is in flux.

Coal prices are at historic lows, pollution from burning coal at historic highs. State-owned coal companies are spending more cleaning up their mines, making them safer, and there’s little money left for miners.

“We make a fraction of the salary we made a couple of years ago, and that’s if we get it at all," complains coal miner Ma Huiming.

Ma says his company, Yangmei Group, owes him and others here in the mining town of Majiapo three months of unpaid wages. His neighbor, Ma Yingfei, says there’s another reason behind the hard times in China’s coal country.

“So many power plants on China’s coast are now importing coal from foreign countries instead of buying our coal,” he mutters.

Ma Huiming works at a coal mine near his village of Majiapo in Shanxi province. He says his employer, Yangmei Group, owes workers three months of unpaid wages. Credit: Rob Schmitz/Marketplace

The reason boils down to simple economics.

“Because we lack the infrastructure here, moving coal from China’s mountains to its coast by rail or by truck is actually more expensive than shipping coal from foreign countries," says Hu Xiaoyong, who works on mergers and acquisitions for government-owned coal companies in Shanxi’s capital city of Taiyuan. "That’s why China’s big coastal cities are abandoning Shanxi coal.”

Coal imports to China are up 20 percent over last year. Most of that coal arrives on ships from Australia and Indonesia. And perhaps someday, from the U.S. Proposed terminals in the Pacific Northwest could export more than 100 million tons of coal a year to China.

“China consumes 3 billion tons of coal a year, and so if you’re looking at a port of a little over a hundred million tons, you’re talking about less than a percent. It would be a really small change to the coal mix," says Susannah Kroeber, an energy analyst at J-capital in Beijing.

She says 100 million tons of American coal a year would be a drop in the bucket for China. Kroeber thinks China would buy it, ironically, for environmental reasons. Coal from Montana’s Powder River Basin, which would be burned at power plants, produces less sulfur emissions than much of China’s domestic coal. Though China’s investing billions in renewable energy, Kroeber says the sheer number of Chinese entering the middle class and using more electricity than ever means coal is going to stick around for a while.

“China’s going to burn coal," Kroeber says. "They don’t really have an option. So if your options are replacing worse coal with better coal, then that’s probably a good tradeoff.”

But for the environment, it’s not an ideal tradeoff. Wang Tao, a climate expert at the Carnegie-Tsinghua center for Global Policy, says coal consumption in China will continue to grow. The China National Coal Association predicts the country will burn 4.8 billion tons of coal by 2020, a more than 70 percent increase from what China burns today. That will make China an attractive market for U.S. and Australian imports, both of which are low-sulfur.

But it could prevent China from fully developing its potential for renewables.

“There could be the scenario that the coal price from the U.S. is so cheap that it makes coal-fired power plants more competitive and squeeze out space for renewables or hydropower, so this is a side effect that we have to consider," says Wang.

A coal truck drives by the stream that runs through the mining town of Majiapo, in Shanxi province. The waterway, polluted by chemicals from Yangmei Group's coal mine upriver, is the main source of drinking water for the village. Credit: Rob Schmitz/Marketplace

In that scenario, China, currently hooked on low quality coal, becomes addicted to cleaner-burning coal and then shuts out cleaner energy solutions.

Whether it’s imported coal or renewable energy, villagers in Majiapu hope something replaces the dirty coal being mined from their mountains. Ma Huiming looks in disgust at the stream running by his home that provides the village with its drinking water.

It’s turned bright orange.

“The mining company discharges all its wastewater into this stream and now look at it -- it’s all poisoned," screams Ma. "The dust from the mine has turned the cabbage in the fields pitch black. Who pays for the cost of all this pollution? We do!”

Ma says the way things are now, he’d be happy to lose his salary at the coal mine and make less as a farmer if it meant his children could drink clean water and breathe clean air. But beyond the mountains of Shanxi, the world’s largest metropolises continue to grow - and so does their hunger for coal.

Coal. So 19th century, right? That’s not how the Crow tribe in southeastern Montana sees it. For Darrin Old Coyote, the tribe’s chairman, coal is the Crow's present and their future. “Coal is life,” he says.

The Crow reservation lies in the Powder River Basin, a coal-rich region that straddles the border of Montana and Wyoming. Under the tribe’s nearly 3,500 square miles of land lie 9 billion tons of coal. Not all of it is recoverable, but the tribe currently derives about two-thirds of its budget from the Absaloka coal mine. It averages around 5.5 million tons a year.

Now the Crow are looking to mine much more of their coal. Earlier this year they signed a lease and exploration deal with one of the largest coal producers in the U.S. Under the agreement, Cloud Peak Energy has the option to mine up to 1.4 billion tons of Crow coal. The tribe stands to gain millions of dollars from the deal, even if Cloud Peak doesn’t end up mining on the reservation. The income will fund annual scholarships for tribal members pursuing college and vocational school.

Dana Wilson, the tribe’s vice chairman, hopes the deal will help lift the Crow’s standard of living. Unemployment hovers around 50 percent and it’s not uncommon for multiple families to share housing. He says the reservation is plagued by a “poverty frame of mind.”

“You live for today," he says. "You get your check and then it’s gone the next day. And then you’re already looking at ways of hustling around and trying to get another paycheck. We’re trying to get away from that.”

Sampson Burdinground, a 70-year-old tribe member, says aside from more mining jobs, there’s the possibility of ongoing royalty payments if Cloud Peak digs up the coal. “The income that will come to the tribe will support the administration, and they use the money to hire people,” he says.

Just to the east, however, the Northern Cheyenne have historically been more wary of exploiting their coal. In the 1970’s the tribe got into a bitter legal fight with the U.S. government and Peabody Coal over coal leases. It wasn't resolved until 1980. Many tribal members have actively resisted coal development, both on and off the reservation, but with an unemployment rate even higher than the Crow tribe’s, internal debate over the issue continues.

Crow leaders have also pushed to build a coal-to-liquids plants for many years, but so far it hasn’t happened. One unemployed young man living on the reservation scoffed at all the talk of coal and jobs. “I grew up on the street all my life,” he said, “and I haven’t seen nothin'.”

Not far from the place where Sitting Bull defeated Custer, Cloud Peak Energy operates one of the biggest coal mines in the U.S. Not that the casual visitor to southeastern Montana would know. The Spring Creek mine is located way off a secondary highway in Decker, a town so small it has a one-room schoolhouse. Travelers can drive miles of rural highway without seeing another car. The mine’s modest sign could easily be missed. A smaller one under it warns “No Trespassing.”

But Spring Creek and about a dozen other mines in the Powder River Basin are in the spotlight now. They’re at the center of a national battle over the future of coal. In this case, whether the U.S. should dramatically expand its coal exports to Asia.

With a wave of old coal plants set to retire or switch to natural gas in the U.S., coal producers in Wyoming and Montana are counting on China, India and Southeast Asia, where coal demand is still rising, to make up for the business they’re losing at home.

Visitors to Spring Creek won’t find pick axes or grimy-faced miners choking on coal dust. Western strip mines are like a four-year-old’s “Tonka truck” fantasy. Workers operate some of the biggest, heaviest, priciest machines in the world. Excavators tear into blasted topsoil and rock to uncover the coal below. Gigantic electric coal shovels scoop up the coal and dump it into 240-ton haul trucks with tires 12 feet high.

“It’s like driving your house on wheels,” the mine’s production planner, Darren White, says of the shovels. Cloud Peak’s home office, two hours away in Gillette, Wyoming, tracks every move these machines make, using onboard computers and GPS.

The Powder River Basin supplies about 40 percent of the nation’s coal. Western coal doesn’t generate as much energy as Appalachian coal, but it’s cheaper and cleaner, for the most part. Thanks to the Clean Air Act, the coal in this region found an eager domestic market. Utilities were looking to the region’s low-sulfur, low-ash coal to help meet new pollution standards. Many of those utilities, however, are now burning even cleaner natural gas, or plan to, as they retire aging coal plants.

Cloud Peak and other producers here already do a fledgling export business with Asia, shipping through ports in Canada. But to dramatically grow that business the industry needs to build more export terminals in the Pacific Northwest. It would also mean more mile-long coal trains rumbling across Montana, Oregon and Washington.

Teresa Ericson, director of the Northern Plains Resource Council in Billings, has been fighting coal for over a quarter of a century. Her group is an alliance of environmentalists and ranchers. “Our members, who live over the surface of coal, for decades have been asked to sacrifice for energy independence for this country,” says Ericson. "I feel like they’ve been under pressure to take one for the team. And that all flies out the window with this. We’re now being asked to be an international sacrifice and that’s just going too far.”

Third-generation rancher Steve Charter remembers when Eastern coal companies first tried to mine in Montana back in the 70’s. “They kind of came in with what we thought was kind of a bad attitude, “says Charter. “They were pretty well used to running over the people in Appalachia and figured, these are pretty rural, backcountry people. Ranchers, their land is their identity, so if you come to push somebody off their land, it’s gettin’ pretty personal.”

It wasn’t until the last few years that coal “got personal” for a lot more people. The industry’s current bid to dramatically increase exports to Asia attracted unwanted attention to the mines in the Powder River Basin and the environmental backlash has been fierce. Groups from the Sierra Club to northwest native tribes to Catholic bishops in the state of Washington have chimed in, reactions ranging from concern to outrage.

Opponents warn of more coal dust and train traffic at home, and say exporting U.S. coal will worsen global warming. Ericson says for years her group’s fight against coal mining here went virtually unnoticed. “Because, you know, you don’t really see strip mines, you don’t drive by strip mines, they’re hidden,” says Ericson. “So our fight was quite a lonely fight and suddenly it’s a global fight and the globe is on our side.”

Certainly right now, the industry’s export dreams look starry-eyed. Global coal prices have fallen dramatically from their highs two years ago. Investors have dropped plans for three of six coal terminals in the Northwest and the rest face fierce and organized opposition. The market’s so soft that this past summer nobody bid on a federal coal tract up for lease in Wyoming, a first for the region.

The industry, however, appears to be planning for the long-term. It’s betting global coal prices will eventually recover and is eager to make its case to the public. Workers at the Spring Creek mine argue the mine provides well-paid jobs. They point to the mine’s good safety record and make sure visitors see the antelope grazing on former mining land that’s been restored.

As for the domestic market, Cloud Peak insists coal will still have a place in the U.S. energy mix for years to come. The Energy Information Administration projects that natural gas will surpass coal as the single largest source of U.S. electricity sometime before 2040, but that coal will still make up almost a third of the power supply. The EIA, however, didn’t factor in future power plant regulations due out next year aimed at reducing emissions from coal-burning plants.

To find out more about where your electricity comes from, check out the EPA's Power Profiler where you can enter your zip code to find more detailed information.

Jay Julius pulls up his hoodie and guns the engine of his fishing boat as we leave the Lummi reservation, just south of the Canadian border. Julius is a councilmember of the Lummi Tribe. And Cherry Point -- just ahead of us -- used to be a home base for his people, before they signed the land over to the federal government in the 1850s. Human remains dating back more than 3,000 years have been found there.

"So that's Cherry point, and then the cliffs start right there, and that's where there's signs of an ancient village, monstrous village," he says.

If coal companies have their way, there could be an export terminal there. At maximum capacity, the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal would draw more than 450 ships per year to pick up Wyoming coal and deliver it to Asia. Those ships would travel through the Lummi tribal fishing area.

For a tribe whose membership hovers around 4,500 people, the $15 million fishing industry is an economic driver for the Lummi.

Brightly colored crab pots dot the water around us. "So you have numerous fishermen up here right now, fishing," Julius says. "What does that mean to our treaty right to fish? This will be no more."

Tribal treaty fishing rights are powerful in this region. Tribes have stopped other projects -- like fish farms or waterfront developments -- when they demonstrated that the project would affect their fishing areas.

Tribes and other communities in the region are worried the increase in coal trains will cause traffic congestion and pollution along the way. And they're worried about the effects of climate change once the coal's burned. More than 50 tribes have signed a letter opposing the coal export proposals in the region.

One Lummi tribal member took things a step further.

Jewell James carved a 22-foot long totem pole and drove it on the back of a truck from the coalfields of Wyoming all the way to British Columbia, along the proposed route of the coal trains. He stopped in Seattle.

"We're hoping that this route that we're taking will help unify people all along the train route," James says.

James says he feels for the families in the coal industry who have suffered as domestic coal use has gone down in recent years. "We know what it's like as Indian country to wake up one morning and don't have a job, because we have the highest unemployment, under employment, worst poverty in the country."

Coal use in the U.S. has dropped as more coal-fired power plants close or shift to natural gas. That has coal companies trying to find routes to sell their product overseas.

But the route to the Asian market through the Northwest won't be an easy one if the people who were here first have anything to say about it.